BEVERLY HILLS, CA - JANUARY 06: The new 2009 Golden Globe statuettes are on display during an unveiling by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on January 6, 2009 in Beverly Hills, California. The 66th annual Golden Globe Awards are scheduled for January 11. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Reflecting a year of "peak TV" with so much remarkable content being produced on so many new platforms, the Globes list is refreshing and startling in its embrace of offbeat and sometimes willfully obscure fare: Hulu's Casual, Amazon Prime's Mozart in the Jungle (both up for best comedy), Netflix's Narcos (drama), Starz's Flesh and Bone (limited series).

Outlander: Overlooked no more

The most pleasant surprise may have been the love shown toward Starz's lush romantic fantasy Outlander, with three nominations (for drama and stars Caitriona Balfe and Tobias Menzies). The least pleasant: the shut-out of HBO's much-improved second season of The Leftovers, with standout performances by Justin Theroux, Carrie Coon, Ann Dowd, Regina King among others.

If there's a downside to the Globes' deep dive into the niches, however worthy some of the results, it's that lots of great work is being ignored from the mainstream. With the exception of Fox's breakout hit Empire, no broadcast drama or comedy made the best series cut: no The Big Bang Theory or The Good Wife from CBS, none of ABC's terrific family comedies—including the diverse new voices represented by black-ish and Fresh Off the Boat­—or Fox's bold comedy experiments like The Grinder and The Last Man on Earth. NBC, which is airing the Globes on Jan. 10, came away completely empty-handed. (The snub of Parks and Recreation's final season, including past host and winner Amy Poehler, is especially jarring.)

Still, the Globes contenders are so much more satisfying than the stagnant pool of nominees for the SAG Awards announced a day earlier, an uninspired retread of seasons past that ignored the exceptional ensembles of FX's Fargo and ABC's American Crime (each of which made good Globes showings, with nods for Fargo's Kirsten Dunst and Patrick Wilson, and Crime's Felicity Huffman and Regina King).

The Veep Emmy darling is one of several who made both Globes and SAG rosters: How to Get Away With Murder's Viola Davis, Mad Men's Jon Hamm (on his final victory lap), House of Cards' Robin Wright, Transparent's Jeffrey Tambor, Orange Is the New Black's Uzo Aduba, Luther's Idris Elba, Bessie's Queen Latifah and Wolf Hall's Mark Rylance.

And then there's Lady Gaga, whose posing on American Horror Story: Hotel is less than skin-deep and whose nomination is in the not-so-proud Globes tradition of pandering to celebrity. The Golden Globes are often accused of being more about the party than the prestige, and seeing them go gaga over Gaga does nothing to lessen that conviction.